The Fear

Chapter 1: Adopted... Again

I've spent most of my short life watching others walk away. I never met my real parents; they put me up for adoption in my native Lithuania and I first remember a family of blonde clones. After two weeks of terrifying dreams and fear, they sent me back. Ever since, I hopped from foster home to foster home, school to school, in Lithuania and the U.S. No one bothered to keep in touch with me, for the most obvious of reasons. I was a freak in the midst of normalcy.

I smoothed the skirt of my grape-colored wrap dress. Like always, the foster family handing me over would make me dress like the perfect daughter so the next couple would take me before it was too late. This time I wore a black and white paisley blazer over it with the buttons open and my treasured black flats decorated with skulls and crossbones that glowed in the dark. Black tights covered my skinny legs and black cat earrings dangled to my pointed chin.

In the mirror, I looked like a snow angel, the pretty blonde princess wearing perfect clothes. Like everyone wanted me to be. It took all my self-control not to rake nails through my perfectly braided honey-blonde waves and ripping the pins out, to take a sulfur-covered washcloth and swipe it over the makeup-caked heart-shaped lips, the round emerald eyes. I could feel the tears brimming, but I held them back. Never. This girl never cried.

I paced myself and took tiny steps down the stairs of the house, wincing at the echo. My belongings, or what I actually cared about taking with me, was packed in a single U-Haul traveling to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Just some clothes, books, mementos. Nothing special. My new family was sitting downstairs waiting for me, waiting for the ticking time bomb to come and ruin their lives until they finally got rid of me. I was placing bets with myself that I'd last a month, maybe two. At most.

It was a trio of one man and two women. The man was a stocky dark-haired one, not too handsome or ugly. Just a regular nondescript guy in his thirties whose face could be plastered anywhere. One woman looked around his age with dark hair cut into a short complicated style, while the other was a teenager with dark green hair and wearing baggy pants weighed with chains. It's a wonder she could travel with them. The short-haired one was wearing a paint-splattered black button-up and stark white pleated slacks over her long feather earrings and black buckled boots. Colorful. They all looked up with identical, smiling hazel-green eyes. The man broke into a smile. I mirrored it with the same enthusiasm. Definitely a month.

I stopped in front of them and my old foster mom, a forty-something lady named Ida. She hated me like I did her, but she couldn't do jack to me. She knew how much worse I could make it for her, even if it was just a slap.

"This is the girl," she told them gruffly, crossing large arms over her fatty chest. The teen girl turned to me with a sunny disposition and held out a hand covered in pewter rings. She liked spiders and stuff, like me. My mind flew back in time, to a time when I was much smaller and more deadly...

She sat curled up in the corner of a small slanted room, rocking back and forth like crazy people in movies did. Her dyed black hair was messy and plastered with sweat to her smooth ivory face, black makeup running down her face alongside her tears. The girl's malnourished form was trembling like a freight train rushing down a track, black rubber bracelets vibrating on her arms. The girl looked up at me with scared eyes, child's eyes. I remember them because I'd admired the color; a beautiful topaz streaked with amber. Her lips were bleeding from her teeth gnawing on them, running in rivulets down her chin.

I stood a foot away from her, looking so indifferent to the situation that it scared her worse. The room was dark on that stormy night, flashes of lightning breaking the bleakness every so often. Besides that, the only light was a white pillar candle sitting on the rickety bedpost, threatening to fall any minute. The setting was just too perfect, too much like a horror movie. But that's what I thought I was; a character in a horror movie. The new and improved Linda Blair. The actors didn't die in horror movies; their characters died. She would be alive in the morning, wouldn't she? I gave my foster sister a sickeningly sweet smile that made her cry out in what seemed like physical pain. But anything I did to her left no marks; those I left for her to create.

"Why?" she asked. Her voice had once been a little deeper, somewhat happier and brighter once upon ago. Now it was high, scratchy, timid. I cocked my head to the side.

"Why what?" I asked sardonically. The shaking got worse; I hadn't thought it could.

"Why do you hate me?" she asked, as if what I was doing was unique to her. I giggled. She screamed, clutching her head with blood crusted fingernails. The thunder muffled it.

"Stop the images! Stop them!" she howled.

"I don't hate you, sweetie. I just need you to feed me." I opened my mouth and it appeared. A thick, purply dark smoke started coming out of her mouth, sluggishly moving to mine like a lazy snake. As soon as the substance touched my lips I latched to it, my cravings disappearing. I wasn't hungry anymore, wasn't skin on a skeleton. My baby fat returned, cheeks rounding out. My long blond hair became glossy and thick, skin suddenly flushed with health. My sister had become my food source, like all of the rest.

When I was fully sated the smoke abruptly cut off. My cravings weren't gone, but they had become managable. The Goth girl shuddered against the bleached wood of the wall staring at me once more with those gorgeous topaz eyes. She was pretty, I thought absently. It's too bad she can't live.

The girl's name was Izzy. She was sixteen and I was eight. I'd returned to my bedroom that night and slept soundly. Our foster family found her laid on her creaky wooden bed, hands folded over her stomach and looking so peaceful it was admirable. It wasn't until they noticed she wasn't moving that the reality finally hit me. They were dead; all of my actors were dead. And I, the director of this horrorshow movie, had killed every single one of them.

"I'm Rayne," she said brightly. I broke away from the memory to take her hand and shake it. Rayne reminded me of Izzy; sweet, happy, and Goth. It killed me inside.

"Nice to meet you. My name is Katarina," I replied with as much fake happiness as possible. They didn't seem to notice. The man shook Ida's pudgy hand and, with few last words of farewell, she shoved us out the door. I was fine with that; she wasn't my favorite foster parent either.

The man introduced himself as Trouble, nicknamed for his knack of getting into it. He was my new dad and a photo journalist. The woman was his wife Olisha Desinof, a painter and board member for their town's art museum. I thought of her as the family's motherly figure. They got me settled in the gold Honda parked in front of the farmhouse and we drove off from the New Jersey residence. The questions were simple: favorite everything, hobbies, past academics. I answered as truthfully as I could, though my pastimes weren't easy to list.

I typically scared the shit out of people for fun and need, as my twisted nature demanded. Many of the people who hated me were my most important source of energy and sustenance. In a way, I depend on fearful or pained people. It gives me pleasure, a high of euphoric proportions that only I can understand. When I'm injured, it literally heals the cuts and blood automatically clots. Regular food doesn't sustain me at all; I need to feed on them. Fear and pain are my specialties, my food source. My persona. That's why no one kept me for long; I fed from them for so long they either went insane or died or just gave up. I give brownie points to the dead ones; they tried the most. But this family was different; I didn't want to hurt them. They had a type of flair, a laid-back but responsible attitude. They'd keep me as long as they could, I'd bet. I was opposed to feeding from them. But I had no choice.

It was best to get a feel for them now, to know how to extract the fear. To numb the process. I stretched out my awareness to their minds while they drove, quietly creeping into the part of their brains that processed fear and pain. But just as I found them, I met three brick walls. They had no fear, no phobia I could use. Everyone had some fear deep inside, didn't they? Of course they did; but none of these people did.

Olisha turned her head a fraction the right, enough to catch my eye. "It's pointless, Katarina. We have nothing for you in that sense." How did she know? I nodded with a mumbled "Yes ma'am," and kept myself isolated in mind for the rest of the long trip.